The Rosie the Reviewer Podcast

Welcome to Rosie the Reviewer, a Dutch-Canadian female-led WW2 media podcast. A new episode airs every Friday!

Blogs

Everything about Rosie and our WW2 adventures.

Episode 117 - The Book Thief - episode art
Episodes

Ep 117 – The Book Thief – The Power of Books in Nazi Germany

This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we cover The Book Thief (2013), based on Markus Zusak’s bestselling novel about a girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Her foster family teaches her to read, and hides something far more dangerous beneath the floorboards. We talk about the power of storytelling while books are burning, and about the small, enormous risks this family takes to protect someone.

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11/07/2026 No Comments
Episode 115 - Come and See - Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 115 – Come and See – A Belarusian Nightmare You Cannot Wake From

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Come and See (1985), directed by Elem Klimov and set in German-occupied Belarus. We follow Flyora, a teenage boy who joins a partisan unit and is drawn into the systematic destruction of Belarusian villages by German forces. We talk about the film, the history of what Germany did to Belarus, and the survivor accounts that Adamovich travelled across the country to collect.

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26/06/2026 No Comments
From Here to Eternity - Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 114 – From Here to Eternity – Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, and the Peacetime Army

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss From Here to Eternity (1953), based on James Jones’s novel about the peacetime US Army stationed in Hawaii in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor.
We also dig into the women of wartime Hawaii who were doing a lot more than waiting around, from the Women’s Air Raid Defense tracking aircraft around the clock to OSS recruit Elizabeth McIntosh, who taught herself Japanese and ended up producing propaganda in India.

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19/06/2026 No Comments
Ep 112 – The Longest Day – Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 112 – The Longest Day – D-Day from Every Angle

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Longest Day (1962), the docudrama based on Cornelius Ryan’s nonfiction book about the Allied landings at Normandy on 6 June 1944. We go through the mega ensemble cast, stuff we liked and can’t get over how good Cornelius Ryan is at character driven narratives.
We also get into: the star-studded cast, the lack of blood, some movie trivia and the Plus: Canadia mention.

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05/06/2026 No Comments
Ep 111 – The King's Speech – Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 111 – The King’s Speech – Bertie, Lionel, and Some Unfortunate Tongue Twisters

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The King’s Speech (2010), the biopic about King George VI and his unlikely friendship with Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue. We get into what the film gets right and where it takes some liberties… look, Edward VIII was a lot more pro-Nazi than the movie suggests. Also: how the Second World War ended up being the best thing that could have happened for the British monarchy’s reputation.

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28/05/2026 No Comments
Ep 110 – Der Tiger – Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 110 – Der Tiger – We Are Now A Tank Podcast

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Der Tiger (2025), a German film about a Tiger I tank crew on a special mission behind Soviet lines in 1943. What starts as a tense war film quietly becomes something else entirely. We talk about the Eastern Front after Stalingrad, give you much-needed tank facts (are we a tank podcast now?), and generally enjoy this one a lot.

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21/05/2026 No Comments
Days of Glory – Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 109 – Days of Glory – North Africa’s War for France

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Days of Glory (2006), the Rachid Bouchareb film that follows a fictional group of North African soldiers fighting with the Free French forces to liberate Europe. We talk about the film’s honest depiction of colonial racism, the ensemble cast, what the film gets right and where it falls flat, and the real history of the hundreds of thousands of African soldiers whose story went largely untold for decades.

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15/05/2026 No Comments
Ep 108 – Another Mother's Son – Episode Art
Episodes

Ep 108 – Another Mother’s Son – Resistance on the Occupied Channel Islands

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss Another Mother’s Son (2017), the true story of Louisa Gould, a Jersey shopkeeper who sheltered an escaped Russian POW on the German-occupied Channel Islands. We talk about the film’s strengths and where it shortchanges its own story, and we cover the history of the occupation, from Britain’s decision not to defend the islands to what happened to Louisa after her arrest. It’s also Mother’s Day this weekend, so we’re joined by a very special guest: Rhonda, Sam’s mom.

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08/05/2026 No Comments
Rosie the Reviewer the Thin Red Line
Episodes

Ep 105 – The Thin Red Line – Guadalcanal But Make It Anti-War

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we discuss The Thin Red Line (1998), directed by Terrence Malick and based on James Jones’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. This might be the most philosophical anti-war film ever made. We discuss Guadalcanal as paradise, and the antagonist: the war as a whole. Not even the Americans are heroes in this one. The most heroic thing they did? Leave.

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17/04/2026 No Comments
Episodes

Ep 104 – Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man – One War Too Many

This week on Rosie the Reviewer, we talk about Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (2026), directed by Tom Harper and written by Stephen Knight. The film serves as the finale of the Peaky Blinders TV series (2013-2022) and is set during World War II, following an ageing Tommy Shelby as he navigates Nazi counterfeit schemes, the Birmingham Blitz, and a son he barely knows. We get into the writing choices that don’t land, the female characters who deserved better, the real history of Operation Bernhard and the Birmingham Blitz, and what made the original series work, and why this film loses it.

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10/04/2026 No Comments
Episodes

Ep 103 – Beb, Bob, and The Bombardment – When Your Liberators Drop the Bombs

In this episode of Rosie the Reviewer, we’re joined by Lisa Koolhoven, Dutch historian and WWII Rotterdam bike tour guide, and Kristen Hayford, American-in-the-Netherlands, who joined forces to make the podcast Beb & Bob | Collateral Damage about their journey to discover whether their grandparents’ paths may have crossed in the Forgotten Bombing of Rotterdam by the Allies.

Together, we review The Shadow in My Eye (2021), a Danish film based on Operation Carthage, during which the RAF accidentally bombed a school in Copenhagen in March 1945.

We discuss the myth of the faultless liberator, what mainstream war media consistently refuses to show, and why the words ‘collateral damage’ carry so much weight.

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02/04/2026 No Comments